Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Does instant information signal an instant loss of patience?
In the first chapter of The Shallows, Nicholas Carr brought up a point that I found quite interesting. He noticed that his use of the Internet has changed the way he thinks and reads, for he along with a few of his friends have found that as they use the Internet more and more in their daily lives, they find it harder to focus and read longer texts and novels. He attributes this to the instant gratification that the Internet grants us with information and headlines constantly available at our fingertips. It is not only harder for him to focus on reading, but he now finds that he scans articles and books rather than reading the entire text, a strategy that many high school students are guilty of using. If we find this problem in our lives today, what is going to happen to our children? How will their reading habits and patience be affected by the Internet and future inventions that change the way we access information? I must admit that the Internet has definitely made my life more convenient , for how would I complete research projects without it? The thought of spending vast amounts of time looking through books for information makes me cringe, but that is my point exactly. If I have lost the patience to search for my information after only a few years of using the Internet, what will happen to the generation of children after me who were raised with the Internet in their back pockets?
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I agree with you, if it was not for school I do not think that half the students in our school would ever read books. Carr makes some good points and speaks from some of his own experiences with the Internet. Honestly, I think that in our children's life time they are probably going to be so advanced in technology that they won't even have to read or skim they will just have it programmed into their brain instantly. It is a bit mind blowing to think that there could actually be a possibility but just think, fifty years ago who would have thought that we would have touch screen phones that we could do almost anything from or deceased holographic rap artists performing in concerts.
ReplyDeleteThat's a really interesting point that you bring up. I also know people who won't sit and watch a movie because they no longer have the patience. Instead, they prefer a two-minute cat video on the internet to entertain them. More and more we seek instant gratification. If a book starts off slow, we consider giving it up. If a website takes more than three seconds to load, then our computer is too slow. We want things done quickly nowadays. This reminds me not only of Brave New World, but also of Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. In the society of this novel, speed is everything. No one reads books, has conversations, takes a stroll, or stops to smell the flowers. Our world has the potential to become these new worlds, but it is possible to prevent it. If teachers require at least one or two books when doing research projects, we are one step further. If we limit the amount of internet we use, we another step further. It's up to this generation to help the next.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it is the loss of patience, for all human kind, because if that where so, then there would be no such thing as research, invention, and innovation. I think we mean to refer to the mass amount of people, the majority of us spend our time with our fast paced internet, our ready-in-five minute meals, and our phones that bring every thing you could ever want, available to you in the matter of seconds. What puzzles me so, is what those men with the lab coats do in order to stay focused, how are they untouched by America's need for instant gratification? How do medical students endure medical school for so long without simply loosing patience and giving up?Perhaps it is not the media, and technology that are giving us this handicap of short term attention spans, but perhaps it's just us. For example, Mcdonalds doesn't make you fat, it only provides that food that may make you gain weight.
ReplyDeleteI cannot help but admit that Carr hit the bull's eye with the facts that he pointed out, for I, too, am a victim of this modern era filled with continuous innovations of new technology gadgets and faster Internet services. While reading his words of his own experiences with the Internet and computer, I wondered to myself, "Is this he me?" Though literally we are not the same people, our minds have both been influenced to the point where we are too dependent on the Internet nowadays. Even I seldom go to the bookstore anymore since I can just simply download or buy the eBook online for my phone or iPad. When you mentioned losing your patience, I realized that even my patience level continues to wane day by day. The creation of an even faster Internet continues to decrease my level of patience. Someone above mentioned about not being able to watch a long movie properly, which is true in my case. That also made me realize that since movies stream so fast online these days, I find myself skipping more and more, watching only the beginning and end. If my generation is already like this with our 4G LTE phones that have the almost the same amount of ram as a normal computer, imagine what the future will hold for the upcoming generations. It irks me to know how much they will have given up due to too much dependency on addictive scraps of machines.
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